Broadband: from a slow start to ultrafast

In the first of a three-part series on high-speed web access, we look at the
changing face of internet access in the UK as broadband celebrates its 10th
birthday

HIgh-speed internet access has fundamentally changed the way we live our lives, though broadband connectivity in rural areas can still be poorPhoto: PA

By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor

7:00AM GMT 25 Mar 2010

In 2002, BT’s chief executive, Ben Verwaayen, stood up at a press conference and told the assembled journalists that his company was, essentially, betting the house on broadband. By 2006, he said, the company would have five million high-speed internet subscribers, because he was going to slash prices.

His audience burst out laughing – at the time the company had just 135,000 broadband customers. And indeed, Verwaayen did get it wrong – there were 13 million connections in the UK by the end of 2006, and now there are some 18 million, and the majority of them use BT’s network. That’s around two-thirds of all households. Subscribers get an average speed of between four and five megabits per second, for which they pay an average of £15 per month – that’s roughly half what it was in 2003.

All is not rosy with British broadband, however – although as the telecoms regulator Ofcom has pointed out, very few people thought we would end up where we are now, with many Britons agreeing with the idea that broadband is becoming a basic human right. Today, in the words of the Ofcom head Ed Richards, “We are at a point of change in the development of the UK broadband industry.”

On the one hand, swathes of the country are, in fixed-line broadband terms, missing out. Ten per cent of the country has never used the internet. And even though doing so saves individuals an average of £561 per year, be it via online shopping or discounts on utility bills, it is typically the poorest who are the most disfranchised.

In some rural areas, and even many suburbs, broadband barely exists, which is why the Telegraph’s campaign on the issue has attracted so much attention. Connecting the last 10 per cent of homes, the most isolated, is going to be so ferociously expensive that even Gordon Brown has promised to do it no more specifically than “over time” after 2017.

On the other hand, Virgin Media is trialling a 200mbs service in Kent, and is due to roll out its 100mbs product later this year. BT, even as you read this, is introducing fibre-based infrastructure in various configurations across the country. Its current chief executive, Ian Livingstone, reckons that by 2012, between 40 and 50 per cent of the country will have ultrafast broadband.

Between those two conflicting themes there are, however, clear trends: more people want better broadband for a reasonable price. According to Charlie Ponsonby, of the comparison website simplifydigital.co.uk, “tomorrow’s customers will be signing up for faster speeds”.

On Saturday we’ll take a look at who will be providing those next-generation services.